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Updated: June 28, 2025
Mark issued it under the name of "William Foster." Only Catherine and his friend Frederic Berrand knew who William Foster really was. The newspapers praised the workmanship of the book almost universally. But many of them severely condemned it as dangerous, morbidly imaginative, horrible in subject, and likely to do great mischief because of its undoubted power and charm.
Sometimes she had a longing to tell them of this knowledge, to say to Mark, "Do not waste yourself in this useless energy!" to say to Berrand, "Do not rejoice over the future of that which has no future." But she refrained, knowing that to speak would be to give the lie to what she spoke. For such revelation must frustrate her contemplated action.
As she watched Mark and Berrand, as she listened to them, she seemed to watch and listen to children, playing idly, chattering idly, on the edge of events that must stop their play, their chatter perhaps for ever. For this book would never see the light. No one would ever read it. No one would ever speak of it but these two men, whose lives seemed bound up in it. And Catherine alone knew this.
He sometimes wrote, but nobody knew that he wrote except one friend, Frederic Berrand. And Berrand could be a silent man. Even to Catherine, when he fell in love with her and wooed her, Mark did not reveal his desire for fame, or his intention to win it. The girl loved her lover for what he was, but not for all he was. Of the still water that ran deep she as yet knew nothing.
But he won't disturb me. And my scheme is ready." Catherine felt the breath fluttering in her throat as she murmured, "Your scheme is ready?" "Yes. It's a great one. Berrand thinks so. I have written something of it to him. I am going to trace the downfall of a nature from nobility to utter degradation." His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, as he repeated in thrilling tones, "Utter degradation."
Yet she had some happy, or at least some feverishly excited, moments, for Berrand was generally staying with them, and Catherine abnormally sensitive as she always was to her undoing, came under his curious influence and caught some of his enthusiasm for the talent of "William Foster." Once again Mark began to speak to her of his work, to read parts of it aloud to both his companions.
Berrand immediately horrified her. Of course he did not speak of "William Foster." "William Foster's" existence in the house was a secret. But he freely aired his sentiments on all other subjects, and each sentiment went like a sword through Mrs. Ardagh's soul. "How can Mark make a friend of such a man," she said to Catherine. "Like your father, he has no religious belief.
Mark and Berrand were eagerly talking of the snake, praising its lustrous skin, marvelling at its jewelled eyes, foretelling its lithe progress through Society. She heard the murmur of their voices until far into the night. And sometimes she thought that distant murmur sounded like the hum of evil, or like the furtive whisper of conspirators.
He paused with a smile. "Then ?" said Catherine, leaning slightly forward. "Then that human being may cut our thread prematurely, and down we go to death." Catherine drew in her breath sharply. "But that again," continued Berrand. "Is man or woman not the fantasy you call Fate?"
"God," she continued, after a moment of silence, "may choose to use a man or woman as an agent instead of a disease." "Oh, well," said Berrand, with his odd, high laugh, "I cannot go with you on that road of thought, Mrs. Sirrett. I am not afflicted with a religion. Oh, here's Mark. How have you been getting on, Mr. William Foster?" "Grandly," he replied.
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